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July 31st, 2009UncategorizedThe Bellflower facility, where 23 unauthorized workers accessed Nadya Suleman's records, is the first to be monetarily penalized under a new state law.Reporting from New York -- California health regulators fined Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower hospital $250,000 Thursday for failing to keep employees from snooping in the medical records of Nadya Suleman, the mother who set off a media frenzy after giving birth to octuplets in January. -
July 30th, 2009Uncategorized
There has been continued speculation about Facebook’s projected revenue for 2009 and many have posted estimates in the range of $400 to $500 million. If those are truly accurate estimates, Facebook’s revenue per employee falls somewhere between Adobe and eBay based on revenue estimates provided by Royal Pingdom. For a company which has yet to find a “breakthrough” revenue model, it’s most definitely producing competitive results.
Does that mean Facebook’s revenue will scale proportionally to the number of employees they hire? Probably not but considering the large number of employees allocated to non-revenue generating activities (fighting spam, building out the platform, and running communications, etc), Facebook has a lot of room to grow. Unfortunately the comparison to large companies breaks down when you start analyzing profit margins.Facebook is known for being unprofitable although they are reportedly moving toward a positive EBITDA (earning before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) in the first quarter of next year according to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer. With a few adjustments to their ad platform Facebook could still increase their revenue considerably.
As I previously mentioned, more robust metrics of the conversion of visitors from Facebook ads into fans of public profiles would help increase Facebook’s revenue. Right now there are no metrics for ad conversions within Facebook and as a result many advertisers choose to link to external properties. A system in which advertisers pay to direct traffic within a single site is almost unthinkable (aside from the current pay-per-install ecosystem within applications).
Facebook still has a lot of room to grown but for the time being, users continue to come back and advertiser continue to pay for advertisements. The only question now is: when will Facebook begin generating profit margins similar to that of eBay or Adobe?
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July 29th, 2009UncategorizedLast month, we wrote about how the recording industry was able to pressure the operator of a BitTorrent search engine into pleading guilty despite not actually having broken the law. The site in question didn't host any infringing files, but merely linked to a variety of files. Previous lawsuits had shown that, in Spain, merely linking is not infringement. But with the cost of a huge court case, the operator found it cheaper to just settle. Emboldened by this, it appears the industry is going after other sites as well, despite the earlier court rulings finding such sites legal. TorrentFreak notes that in one case, against the search engine Agujero.com, the local recording industry reps demanded an immediate injunction against the site, without even allowing the site's operators to give its side. Luckily, the judge did not fall for this, and after a hearing in which both sides presented their position, is allowing the site to continue operating while the trial continues, noting that shutting down the site: "might cause irreparable prejudice to the defendant." It's good to see another reasonable ruling, though troubling that the recording industry tried to push for an immediate injunction.
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July 28th, 2009Uncategorized
Third, Facebook says the first verified apps will be coming online in the next few weeks, and they’ll be given special prominence in the new application directory. “These apps will be prioritized higher in the directory and will appear alongside a green checkmark in the directory and a verified badge on the application’s new Profile Page,” Facebook says. It’s been a long time since Facebook originally announced the verification program, so developers are keen to see just what advantages the verification program brings.Finally, Facebook will be reworking the categories used to filter apps to make them more useful.
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July 27th, 2009Uncategorized
Facebook isn’t nearly as vulnerable to XSS attacks since embedding code in your page is not a major part of the experience. The biggest Facebook attack so far - the Koobface worm (artist’s impression above) - instead relied on users clicking a link in a Facebook message and visiting a site to download a file. Other attacks relied upon users entering their Facebook login details on third party sites.
Twitter, however, was vulnerable to XSS attacks because hackers realized that you could place rogue code into the “location” field of a profile - this was a major security hole since it required nothing more than visiting a page to get your account compromised. In addition, Twitter’s viral nature dramatically increased the speed the attack was able to spread at. However, Twitter now claims to have closed this hole.
Facebook is also much safer than email: when a phishing link is found, Facebook can disable it centrally, removing it from all messages across the site. The difference is that we’ve learned to be cautious about links in emails, while we’ve learned to be very trusting of links in Facebook messages from friends. The Facebook threat is a trust issue, not a technical one with the Facebook site.
So while Facebook attacks might seem unpleasant, take comfort in the fact that Facebook is much more secure than what came before it.
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July 26th, 2009Uncategorized
TwitterMass is an excellent site for those planning to build a formidable network of twitter followers.
The site helps you find twitter users based on keywords. You then have the option to mass follow all such users just like you can with other similar twitter apps like Twollow and TwitterPerch. You can also @reply personalized messages to all the newly followed users.
The site also provides an excellent #FollowFriday feature. Just select the Auto Follow Friday option and every friday a set of your twitter followers would be tagged with the #FollowFriday hashtag automatically. The site takes the number of RT, @replies and other mentions of your username into account before suggesting a followfriday on your behalf.
If at any point of time you do not wish to continue with your twittermass account you can easily delete the account as well.
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July 25th, 2009Uncategorized
Some questions
How many fonts are already featured? Can users submit fonts of their own to the site?
In their own words
“Hand-picked free fonts for download.”
Why it might be a killer
The featured fonts will let you add a touch of class to your site or blog on the spot.
What it does
FontEx is an online repository of – you guessed it – fonts. These have been handpicked and are ready for immediate download. As it is the case with sites such as this one, you can see the fonts that have received the highest ratings along with the latest additions to the catalog.
The database can likewise be browsed by font styles, and some of these include “Calligraphic”, “Typewriter”, “Stencil” and “Serif” to name just a few from a very comprehensive set.
In addition to that, the site includes a comprehensive collection of resources such as articles that go by names like “We love typography” and so forth.
Finally, it is important to stress that a section named “premium fonts” is likewise included, and it is the place to go if you are looking for fonts that are a notch above the rest. Just locate your browser at www.fontex.com if you want to learn more about this repository and sample what it has to offer for yourself.
Link: http://www.fontex.org
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July 24th, 2009Uncategorized
Flirt140 is yet another twitter dating site similar to MyTweetHeart and Radaroo.
The site provides a variety of options such as gender, location and keyword to search twitter users. A list of all twitter users matching your search criteria would be displayed to you. To view the profiles of matching users you need to sign-in to the site by way of twitter OAuth.
Once signed-in you can view any users profile, send them a private message as well as “wink” at them! You can tag any user with words that best describe them.
The site isn’t visually appealing but for those looking at twitter as a dating site, it’s a must visit.
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July 23rd, 2009UncategorizedThe Associated Press reports that pharmacists and customers will be talking with trade regulators today about CVS Caremark Corp. practices. While a major issue is whether CVS Caremark is charging patients higher co-pays for not using CVS pharmacies, the AP reports suggests that there are also privacy concerns about the company’s use of patient data.
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July 21st, 2009UncategorizedIt's safe to say that Facebook has had more than its share of privacy glitches. Now, Wired reports that the company has been snooping on private messages and censoring ones that contain file-sharing links.